Fire and Ice the Melting of Icebergs
by megyal
Summary: If you're going to hate, then hate cold.


_Some say the world will end in fire,  
Some say in ice.  
From what I've tasted of desire  
I hold with those who favor fire.  
But if it had to perish twice,  
I think I know enough of hate  
To say that for destruction ice  
Is also great  
And would suffice._   
"Fire and Ice", Robert Frost

It was cool by the lake; autumn fresh and sharp, spicy-aired and overall distinct in its loveliness. It was all copper and blue, dry leaves and cool sky and Draco was trying his best to enjoy himself, but he couldn't. 

He couldn't because Potter was standing about thirty feet away from him near the watery edge (daring the giant squid) arms folded casually, flanked by Weasley, Granger and nearly the entire seventh-year Gryffindor, glancing now and again at Draco lounging with _his _friends under the imposing willow tree. 

Draco was lying to himself, though, and he had matured enough to admit it. He was positively _wallowing _in this absolutely perfect day, because it was unbelievably beautiful, and Potter was beautiful in it. Fine. There it was, all plain. He thought Potter was beautiful in it, because no one should own hair that black. He wondered idly if Potter dyed it, and then wriggled absently with his head in Pansy's lap. She was stroking through his own clear strands with lazy care, making sure that the part was undisturbed, and Draco could almost let himself dream that this was always how it was, that there was no Order for him to spy for, that they were all just final year students enjoying a lovely evening after nothing more arduous than a few N.E.W.T level classes, and who would be out of uniform and out into the working world next year this time. 

A person was allowed to dream, correct? 

He stretched and arched up with that eerie grace that the whole school was basically hooked on (Draco Malfoy ambling casually through a corridor, his pace unhurried, was bound to make anyone a junkie) and stood up, lithe and slender, a shade taller than Potter but inches below that ogre Weasley (what was his mother feeding him on?). The sneer that had dominated his face in lower-school had given way to a controlled polite mask. It had increased his hotness factor by about 67. (He had heard some fourth-year Ravenclaw come up with that figure during breakfast one day. He rather thought it was more). 

As he got up and twisted, cracking his spine, the rest of his group rose as one, robes immaculate, green collars flatly neat. They were the entourage of the current Prince of Slytherin, it surely wouldn't do to resemble the noisy harridans that surrounded Potter, their own robes damp at the edges where they were shrieking and playing in the chilly water like first-years. How very charmingly pathetic. Although the first-years wouldn't be caught dead near the lake...the upper-schoolers had managed to scare the living shit out of this set with horrendous stories. Even Potter had not been above telling the tall tales and apparently he was _very _good at it; Draco would watch the smallest Gryffindors at dinner, their eyes widening comically as Potter and Thomas would sit amongst them, Potter's full red mouth moving slowly, his eyes aflame with mischief. 

If they only knew what horrors Potter had been through, and would _still _go through, just to save them. They would probably never sleep at night. 

He started his polished stroll past Potter and the G-Unit, and he saw Potter's green eyes sharpen under those thick dark lashes, and Draco made sure to pass so close to him, inhaling the heated smell that was Harry, all Harry. 

"Potter," he murmured chillingly, and was slightly amused to note that Longbottom actually shivered a little at his voice, but Potter merely flicked his eyelids up all the way, his gaze burning right past Draco's irises and into the core of his brain, and he nodded slowly. 

"Malfoy." The reply was not cool, not icy like his. It was suffused with the essence of Harry and therefore was warm to Draco, pushing at the iceberg that was Malfoy, and he could literally hear the drip-drip-drip of that iceberg in the midst of global warming, and while his Malfoy instincts were scandalised, the rest of him reveled in the heat, _basked _in it, and was glad. 

"I always wanted to believe in you," Potter had said, when the Order had brought a bitter, yet determined Draco into the house at Grimmauld Place and Draco had really tried not to look at him in doubtful amazement, years of spiteful childish enmity literally seared into him, and Potter had smiled a little over his teacup. 

"I did. At the bottom of it all, I did. But I couldn't get past the hate." Potter looked away, observing the kitchen sink, and then looked back at Draco, his gaze old and weighty. "You hate pretty good, Malfoy. If hating was an Olympic sport, you'd be a gold medalist." 

Draco had simply continued to be shocked (and not quite getting what _olympic sport_ was) and Potter continued to measure him with those eyes until he seemed to be satisfied. He leaned forward, eyes hooded and pushed aimlessly at his blackened toast. 

"Can you hate for me, Draco?" He had asked softly. "I think I will need it. I can't hate like you, all of mine is caught up in bloody emotions...but you can hate _cold_. Calculating, you know? And I will need it." 

Draco had thought about his beautiful haughty mother, and how she was considered an excellent sacrifice for the failure of her husband, and he felt his heart twist and sharpen and freeze, and he had nodded. 

"I can...Harry." 

Harry was whispering in his ear about the different terminologies for ice that could be found in the language of the Central Siberian Yupik Eskimo, and where Harry had picked up this information was beyond Draco (he mentioned something about a _national geographic_ that Granger had bought for him, but Draco had never heard of it, and right now, with Harry pressed against him, he really did not care), and Harry was laughing and saying that they should put a new one in: _Draco_, meaning _icy prince_, and said Icy Prince began the unheard-of procedure of blushing, going pink from head to toe. Harry had pulled back a little, taking him in under the soft light that the Room of Requirement had seen fit to supply, and grinned, he himself flushed, damp dark threads sticking to his forehead and obscuring the scar, and then kissed him in that fiery way that only Harry had. 

Draco melted in this for a long while, and then took the kiss and cooled it down, slowed it so that their tongues could properly savour each other, and he felt Harry's palms on his face, ghosting over his cheeks and jaw, drawing in out and drawing him in, and Draco still heard the drip-drip-drip of an iceberg in the midst of global warming. 

He had managed to hate in his cold way for Harry when they had stood before the Dark Lord, the two of them caught in an impenetrable dome that the Dark Lord had cast around them, thinking to entrap them both; but it was Harry who had his palm out, forgetting completely about his wand, sheer power sizzling and boiling in the space between them and where the Dark Lord was pressed against the dome-wall, shrieking; but even Harry knew that it was not quite enough and he had held Draco's wrist lightly in his other hand and whispered, "Hate for me." And Draco had opened his mind and pushed out everything, his acidity at Harry himself when they were so much younger, his disappointment in his father, his agony over his mother; he pushed it all out, all of it tinged with the wintery snap of a Malfoy abhorrence and he could feel it link and catch at Harry's own burning hatred and mix with it and tear apart with it and the iceberg dripped into nothing as his heart clenched around the love that remained, love for the person beside him, and even that was thrown into Harry's palm and it was too much for a Dark Lord that knew hate, but did not know what it was like to hate, and hate _cold_, for love.

_fin_


End file.
